Found
by DrawMeASheep
Summary: Post Hide and Seek. Tony, Ziva and McGee enjoy beer and banter at a bar. Brought to you by the letter B.


Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS. Now I hate windmills even more. No, that's not fair. The windmills are innocent; it's the turtles that are to blame. WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. GOODNIGHT!

Spoilers: Minor for _Hide and Seek_, with bitsy ones for the preceding eps.

Summary: Post-case standard fare as the team hangs out in a bar.

* * *

"I was trying to help you out, McGee, and now I'm out twelve-hundred large! The least you can do is pay for my drinks tonight!"

"Tony…" McGee frowned, doubting any charitable motives, but slowly reached into his back pocket. Ziva had been nice enough to pick up the first round, supposedly because she had been spared the trouble of hiking through the woods and gotten the last stool at the end of the bar, so it wasn't like he was… Any thoughts of paying disappeared from his mind as he found nothing to pull out. "Oh, no. Somebody took my…"

"Check your other pocket, McGee," Ziva suggested from her seat on the other side of Tony, who was still hanging over the corner of the bar, gazing at McGee with pathetic puppy-dog eyes he chose to ignore.

"But I never put my wallet in…oh." He took it from the unexpected pocket and removed the first twenty he found, thankful that tonight was apparently a beer night when the bartender brought a small pile of ones in change. "That was weird."

"They bring you ones to trick you into tipping them," Tony said, turning with his fresh beer to lean his back against the bar. Ziva rolled her eyes but didn't move his forearm when he decided to use her shoulder as an armrest.

McGee slipped three dollars under one of their empty glasses. "I know that. I just meant…don't you always keep your wallet in the same place? Wouldn't you think it was weird if you put it in a different pocket and didn't realize it?"

"Weirder than Abby deciding to hang out in the lab and watch the maggots hatch instead of spending time with her favorite investigators?" Tony asked, not mentioning his own lost wallet from a week or two previous. "Actually, that may not be so weird since we're talking about Abby. When I left, she was talking about making little colored bracelets or collars or something so she'd be able to identify them once they start flying around."

Ziva suddenly pushed his arm off her shoulder, looking alarmed. "There are going to be flies free in the lab?"

"Suddenly scared of bugs, my ninja?"

"Not at all. I am just very accurate when I swat them. If Abby has bonded with these flies…"

"You may as well be using your super-assassin powers on her heart?" he finished.

McGee didn't bother to agree out loud, as he was now quickly checking to make sure his phone, badge and weapon were in their proper places. Maybe finding things in the wrong places was just a karmic connection to the case. He pulled out his wallet and did a quick check of his credit cards, just to be sure. Everything was fine until Tony let out a half-squeal. "Don't pinch, don't pinch, _don't pinch_!"

"Ziva…" McGee's calm appeal had the dual effect of making his colleagues behave and making their small group less interesting to the rest of the bar. "Why are you pinching Tony's…" Realizing he didn't want too much information, he quickly amended, "Why are you pinching Tony?"

"You gotta pay attention, Probie. At least you were _there_ the first time Abby and Ziva got physical. All I ever got was your crappy description. No video, no reenactment, nothin'." Tony suddenly ducked around McGee, shoving him closer to Ziva. "Pinch _him_."

She smiled at McGee and shrugged. "He does not deserve it."

McGee barely had a moment to register that Tony had switched places with him again. "Why do you always take McScout's side? Is he bribing you with those chocolate-coconut-caramel cookies he's supposed to be selling? And if so, do you have any with you? Because I could really use a cookie right now."

"No, what you could use is a few more hours in the gym."

McGee was so pleased by Ziva's successful dig that he almost forgot to defend himself from the one Tony had gotten in moments before. "Hey, I never sold cookies; Girl Scouts sell cookies."

"Your point?"

"No cockfights." Ziva stood and grabbed McGee's arm, guiding him to the newly-vacated seat on her other side.

"I think we know who'd win," Tony said, hitching up his belt.

"I meant with birds. Metaphorical birds, of course, but…is this becoming too complicated for you, Tony?"

"Oh. I knew that. I mean, _I_ know that, but usually you don't know that so I just thought…I'm gonna stop." He grabbed a high chair from a nearby table and parked it on her other side. "We should get back to McGee and his troubles sewing his cookie-selling merit badge onto his…"

Ziva cut him off as she turned to McGee, "Why did you participate in these scouting missions? Has your training benefitted you prior to this case?"

He flinched slightly under her pointed questions. All she needed was a notepad or file to complete the illusion that she was interrogating him. "Well, it's mostly for fun rather than _training_, but…yeah. I've learned a lot about, um, survival and some tracking and I…I wasn't very good at archery, but I still…"

"But young children are expected to demonstrate competence in survival skills, yes?"

He felt like he was back in second grade, delivering a surprise 'how I spent my summer vacation' oration to the class. "Well, it's not like…there was this camp and…ropes course…I mean, everything was supervised, but you still learn valuable skills that can benefit you for a lifetime." Not sure he wanted to hear about how much better the Moussad-equivalent to scouting was, he protested, "I managed to find that body the other day, didn't I?"

"Perhaps, but what is the imperative to learn these skills?"

"You get merit badges." Her smirk prompted him to add, "There's a sense of accomplishment, too. You learn a new skill and, um…"

"From what you have said, it sounds like everything occurs within a controlled environment with no risks."

Before McGee could form a logical response, Tony rapped his knuckles on the bar to call for another round and said, "So, when you learned to swim, did someone just toss you in the deep end of the pool and hope you popped back up?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Ziva downed the last third of her current beer in one long swallow. "It was the ocean, and I managed just fine."

McGee took out his wallet and paid for the round when it arrived, as Tony was busily working on getting Ziva to pinch him again. Just to be safe, he slipped the wallet into the inner pocket of his coat.

* * *

Ziva waved to McGee as he pulled away. Reaching forward, she tugged Tony back toward the curb as a car sped around the corner. "Wait for the signal to change."

"Yeah, yeah. I can't believe Probie got a spot right out front while we're both stuck around the block."

"You should be nicer to him. He paid for our drinks all night."

"Oh, hey, big spender, three rounds of domestic draughts. And he only paid for the last two rounds. You paid for the first." He looked at her suspiciously as they crossed the street. "Is your driving about to be more of a no-no than usual? Because I don't mind giving you a ride if…"

"I am fine."

They were comfortably silent until Tony slapped his hand to his forehead just before they reached their cars. "The wrong pocket! How could I have been so dense?"

She grinned. "I am going to pay him back. I'll run to the bank before work and slip it in sometime tomorrow. He will never notice."

"Ziva David, master thief." He chuckled. "For your next caper, are you gonna hit the Smithsonian, pick up a certain cursed diamond that wants to be your best friend?"

"Tony…"

"Y'know, the saddest part is McGee would have spotted you the twenty if you'd asked."

"I know! I felt bad because I had offered to pay for the first round before I remembered I had not been to an ATM and one thing led to another…"

"And before you knew it you were robbing a Boy Scout." He clucked his tongue at her. She narrowed her eyes. "Oh, no, I have the moral high ground and you are not gonna make me…"

"Carry more than ten dollars in your wallet at all times?"

"How do you know…" He didn't take long to pat himself down before demanding, "Give it back!"

"So, technically, it is your fault I had to borrow from McGee," she said, producing his wallet from her bag. "You should really be more careful with that. I heard it went missing not long ago."

"You stole my wallet when…wait…"

"How could I have taken it when I was in Chicago?"

He went through it carefully after snatching it from her hands. "I guess someone earned her Moussad pick-pocketing merit badge, anyway."


End file.
